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As I mentioned earlier this week, I've moved over to the dark side.
Yep, I bought an 11" MacBook Air (I may refer to it as MBA or orion, its hostname).
This isn't my first Mac. I own two Mac minis, but their roles are specialized (HTPC, etc.). This is the first Mac I've purchased that will replace another computer that has a more generalized role, my Asus Eee PC 900 running Debian GNU/Linux. Yep, you read it right: I'm replacing a Linux box with an Apple computer running OS X.
I'll go over the reason for my switch, a short review of the MBA (plus some general OS X comments), and some conclusions.
A number of reasons prompted my switch. Speed and display resolution won out, I think.
The Eee PC 900 is a great little netbook. Over the course of its life (2+ years) I've upgraded the memory (2GB), SSD (32GB), and Wi-Fi adapter (802.11a/b/g/n). It continues to run well. However, software and the web continues to bloat, requiring more and more hardware on the client-side, not to mention more bandwidth. Websites (long articles on Wikipedia, for one) that normally require a second of rendering time started taking 8-10 seconds. Flash Video, maybe better now than it used to be on Linux, continues to demand more processing power. I don't think I can watch any videos from YouTube on the Eee anymore without having to use youtube-dl and MPlayer to play the videos offline.
The 1024x600 resolution is getting a little cramped, too. Many web sites nowadays are starting to require browser windows that exceed 1024 pixels in width, and things like Pidgin take up the whole screen, requiring the overuse of multiple desktops. Even 170 columns and 45 lines (the maximum I can get when fullscreening w/the fixed font) in a terminal emulator is starting to not cut it, anymore.
So, the solution is a new laptop.
I searched around, looking at Dell, Asus, and other brands, trying to find a 9" or 10" netbook with an SSD (I'm over hard drives in mobile devices, at this point) and Atom processor. I found one or two, but there was always something missing (no Bluetooth, etc.). I then started looking at Apple.
The MacBook Air models were enticing, to say the least. The 11" model seemed to fulfill most of my requirements (higher resolution, SSD, Bluetooth). However, I was initially hesitant to purchase because I wanted to run Linux. Well, I obviously gave up that requirement, and impulse-bought the 11" MacBook Air with the following specifications:
OS X has taken a few days to get used to. The hotkeys are easy to learn, and there are quite a few of them. I've hardly mastered the trackpad gestures, but I'm getting there.
I'm pleased with a good many features on the MBA. The main ones are battery life, design, and speed.
The Eee PC 900 started out with 3-5 hours of battery life when Wi-Fi was enabled. The MacBook Air seems to be pushing 4-5 hours with the same amount of usage, and that's with the screen on the whole time. I'm not going to complain about it. Most of the time I only need battery power for 2-3 hours, anyway, so this is more an enough.
I was tempted to fool around with CoolBook and try undervolting the Core 2 processor, but figured it might be more trouble than it's worth. An extra hour or so of battery life at the cost of possible instability didn't really interest me.
Although the MacBook Air has a fan (I hate fans), it's really quiet.
I'm not kidding when I say it's quiet. I have to put my ear up to the back of the display hinge to hear it. Speaking of, the exhaust vent is not on the sides of the unit, it's facing the hinge for the 11" display. I suppose this is part of the reason why there's no [obvious] option for the system to remain on when the display is closed - it'd probably overheat.
One thing I just noticed, too, the MacBook Air runs very cool. Using a temperature gun pointed at the bottom of each unit, here's how the Air compares to my Eee PC when idle:
I suspect the aluminum frame helps to disperse the heat much better than a plastic frame, in the case of the Eee PC.
Along those same lines, the MacBook Air has a ton of temperature sensors, which can be viewed with the Temperature Monitor application:
(orion:13:41)% /Applications/TemperatureMonitor.app/Contents/MacOS/tempmonitor -a -l CPU Core 1: 46 C CPU Core 2: 41 C SMART Disk APPLE SSD TS128C (Y09A40DNK0WK): 37 C SMB NORTHBRIDGE CHIP DIE: 44 C SMB NORTHBRIDGE CHIP DIE: 50 C SMC BATTERY: 29 C SMC BATTERY CHARGER PROXIMITY: 39 C SMC BATTERY POSITION 2: 29 C SMC BATTERY POSITION 3: 28 C SMC CPU A DIODE: 45 C SMC CPU A PROXIMITY: 40 C SMC LEFT PALM REST: 26 C SMC MAIN HEAT SINK 2: 30 C SMC NORTHBRIDGE POS 1: 42 C SMC POWER SUPPLY POSITION 1: 36 C
I've started graphing a few of them with the help of mrtg-rmt, too.
The power adapter is one of the smallest ones that I've seen. Proving a maximum of 45 watts, Apple gave it the flexibility of becoming a brick or a wall wart, which is nice. Also, the cable is nice and thin so it moves around fairly painlessly, unlike others.
To feed my Unix addiction, MacPorts gives me most of the familiar tools I'm used to on Linux. It works well, but some ports don't built, right now (GIMP, dsniff, etc.). I should probably file a bug!
I've got my VPNs working on OS X with no issues. For OpenVPN, I'm using Tunnelblick and either Miredo (from MacPorts) or manual 6in4 over OpenVPN using the following BSD-type ifconfig statements:
# start IPv6 tunnel ifconfig gif0 up ifconfig gif0 tunnel 10.3.254.233 10.3.4.20 ifconfig gif0 inet6 2001:48c8:1:116::2/126 route add -inet6 default 2001:48c8:1:116::1 # stop IPv6 tunnel route delete -inet6 default ifconfig gif0 -tunnel ifconfig gif0 inet6 2001:48c8:1:116::2/126 -alias ifconfig gif0 down
I don't think there's currently a way to setup 6in4 tunnels using the GUI. Disappointing, but not surprising.
I hate for this section to be longer than the previous one, but I'm often overly critical of computer and electronics equipment - plus I'm not one of those folks who worships Steve Jobs and all things Apple. Anyway, let's start.
There are MAJOR Wi-Fi issues in OS X (or maybe the Broadcom hardware in the MBA?). Specifically, 10.6 has some problem with reconnecting to saved networks that happen to not broadcast their SSID in the beacons. At home, I've got a Cisco 1232 WAP that provides 802.11a/b/g with a separate non-broadcase SSID for 802.11a using WPA2-PSK. I can type in the network and key manually, and join the network - this works fine. What doesn't work is reconnecting to the network after saving it. It just never finds the network.
I managed to find some two command-line utilities that sort-of helped diagnose this, airport and networksetup. I used airport to turn on some debugging. Here's what happens during the periodic probes when OS X can't find my SSID. Let's assume my SSID is MyHiddenSSID:
Mon Nov 29 22:12:49: <airportd[56086]> Scan for ssid = MyHiddenSSID, 19 channels
Mon Nov 29 22:12:49: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Directed scan request received from pid 56086 (MyHiddenSSID).
Mon Nov 29 22:12:49: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
Mon Nov 29 22:12:50: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for pid 56086.
Mon Nov 29 22:12:50: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Directed scan request received from pid 56086 (MyHiddenSSID).
Mon Nov 29 22:12:50: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for pid 56086.
It just does that over and over for every network in the list. Nothing special seems to stick out for MyHiddenSSID that's different than the others. I know it can see my hidden SSID in this scanning state, because I can force a probe using the airport utility:
% airport --scan=MyHiddenSSID
SSID BSSID RSSI CHANNEL HT CC SECURITY (auth/unicast/group)
MyHiddenSSID 00:19:06:20:ef:43 -66 64 N -- WPA2(PSK/AES/AES)
Here's what the log says when I manually enter the SSID and PSK:
Mon Nov 29 23:21:52: <kernel> en0: Terminating supplicant.
Mon Nov 29 23:21:52: <kernel> RSNSupplicant: Releasing authenticator for 00:19:06:20:ef:43
Mon Nov 29 23:21:52: <airportd[56417]> airportd started
Mon Nov 29 23:21:52: <airportd[56417]> _APXMIGwakeupAirPortdServer: received 'Associate Event'
Mon Nov 29 23:21:52: <airportd[56417]> process_associate_event: ifName=en0 networkName=MyHiddenSSID securityType=WPA2 Personal, wep40=(null), openSystem=(null) password = ****, oneXDict=(null), remember=true
Mon Nov 29 23:21:52: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Directed scan request received from pid 56417 (MyHiddenSSID).
Mon Nov 29 23:21:52: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
Mon Nov 29 23:21:55: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for pid 56417.
Mon Nov 29 23:21:55: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Directed scan request received from pid 56417 (MyHiddenSSID).
Mon Nov 29 23:21:55: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for pid 56417.
Mon Nov 29 23:21:55: <airportd[56417]> __ACNetworkAssociate(MyHiddenSSID, ****)
Mon Nov 29 23:21:55: <airportd[56417]> __ACNetworkAssociate: Making association request with apnPrivate->isWep40 = (null) and apnPrivate->isWepOpenSystem = (null)
Well, that certainly looks a bit different. Since it tries to associate. Unfortunately, I don't have a fix (well, a good fix - turning on SSID broadcasting fixes it, but I don't want to do that), and lots of other folks have the same problem with 10.6.
Terminal.app is nice, but it's slow and laggy. If you compare it to running rxvt in X11.app, you'll see the difference. It took some time to get used to the key combinations, especially having to use the Fn key to send PgUp & PgDn keys to the terminal itself. Also, just like Konsole, Mutt suffers from the backspace problem.
OS X doesn't read the Linux ext3 filesytem. This stinks, but I'm not surprised, at all. I ended up converting an external USB HDD of mine to HFS+ (instead of FAT32, due to silly small file size limits), since Linux has a mature driver for it, and it's a good compromise.
There aren't many soft cases for the 11" MacBook Air, yet. I did find this one on Amazon, but a corduroy case strikes me as a little strange. I'll probably wait for a better selection, though.
The escape key on the keyboard doesn't depress properly when struck on an angle, and seems a little fragile. I find this happens to me when I'm editing in vim, otherwise I don't really hit the escape key too often. I don't think the other MacBooks suffer from this, since the escape and function keys are a bit larger. They're pretty thin on the MBA. I'll just have to get used to consciously hit the escape key top down instad of on an angle, I guess.
Why, oh why, is there no way to set the system hostname in the GUI? The Bonjour and Bluetooth names can be set, but not the hostname. Out of the box, the default screensaver and terminal prompt will show the DHCP-assigned hostname, like h-10-227-43-200 or whatever. I had to dig around a bit before I found out that this can be set using the scutil utility:
% sudo scutil --set HostName orion
The manpage for scutil(8) discusses command-line arguments for displaying and overriding the other service names.
This is an odd one. Apparently, there's no easy way of determining if the MBA is powered on if the display is shut off. The Apple logo in the back of the screen is lit only when the LED backlight for the display is active. I can put my ear to the area of the hinge near the exhaust vent, to listen for the noise of the fan, but that's about it. Seems silly. Why not just add a tiny white LED somewhere near the keyboard?
OS X has some audio problems. Specifically, there's a huge delay (at least 300ms, from what I can tell) before the audio system starts playing a sound effect or stream. For example, if I trigger the bell in Terminal.app or press the volume buttons on the keyboard, there's a delay before I hear a sound. If I play sounds in succession, there's no delay, because apparently the sound system is active, but if I wait 15-20 seconds before triggering another sound, I'll get a delay. This is much worse when connected to Bluetooth via A2DP. Sometimes the delay is 1-2 seconds!
While the Wi-Fi problem is certainly annoying, I'm getting used to the MBA, and think I'm starting to like it. OS X is still taking a little time to get used to, and I might try booting Debian this weekend, just to see what happens.
Michael, unfortunately that didn't do it for me, I changed it in sharing and Bluetooth preferences, but that only changed the ComputerName and LocalHostName, not HostName (as shown in scutil --get). I even rebooted a few times. I have a feeling it's because my DHCP server sets the hostname option in the DHCPOFFER packet, and that overrides what's specified in sharing preferences. Maybe not many DHCP servers do that, anymore.
scutil --set HostName was the only way that worked for me. Oh well.
Regarding your wireless problem - I don't think I've ever encountered that on my MBP with 10.6. It sounds like maybe something specific to your chipset (Intel here). The wireless problem I have had, which is rather annoying, is that even if my wireless N profile at home is my most preferred in the list of saved networks, it always finds and connects to the G network first. I then have to manually select the saved N profile.
OSX has never supported leaving the laptop on with the screen closed in a default install ... with the exception of when there's an external monitor connected. The fanbois argued back when I had my AlBook about how the thing wood overheat if you ever tried to run it with the screen closed!
However, it ran fine with the screen closed with the monitor plugged in; and it ran fine with the screen closed when it was running GNU/Linux. It's just an Apple thing to not run when the screen is closed. (Why would you? You can't see the prettiness that way.)
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Welcome to the dark side :)
You can change the host name in the GUI.
Open System Perferences and then Sharing and then click edit.